


Left Behind

by Theoroark



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood and Violence, Dysfunctional Platonic Relationships, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-10
Updated: 2018-04-10
Packaged: 2019-04-21 04:48:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14277243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Theoroark/pseuds/Theoroark
Summary: She knew him the second he stepped out of the drop ship. He could wear all the cloaks and heels and be as smoky as he wished, she had followed him into battle too many times during the crisis not to know his walk. She had known Jack had lived, and so Gabriel living too had always hovered as a distinct possibility, but she could never have expected he would come back like this, and with Talon. Jack she was tracking down, Jack she could talk to, eventually, but she did not know what to do about running into Gabriel like this.-AU where Ana finds Gabriel before she finds Jack.





	Left Behind

She knew him the second he stepped out of the drop ship. He could wear all the cloaks and heels and be as smoky as he wished, she had followed him into battle too many times during the crisis not to know his walk. She had known Jack had lived, and so Gabriel living too had always hovered as a distinct possibility, but she could never have expected he would come back like this, and with Talon. Jack she was tracking down, Jack she could talk to, eventually, but she did not know what to do about running into Gabriel like this.

 

So she shot him in the shoulder. His team scattered about, and he whipped his head around and spotted her. She turned and ran.

 

She had been staking out the shipping complex for a few weeks now, and so she was familiar with its twists and turns. She led Gabriel around until she could no longer here the shouts of his team, and then she turned to face him. He was barely human, mostly cloud, and she could have laughed– Gabriel never had liked running very much. He reformed though, and held up his shotguns.

 

“Nowhere to run, Shrike,” he said.

 

“Gabriel,” she said, and he crumpled.

 

She ran to him, alarmed, because crumpling for him now meant his whole body giving way. The pungent scent of rot filled the air and she passed through some of the black cloud as she knelt down next to him and grabbed what was left of his shoulders. He was shaking.

 

“Breathe, Gabriel,” she said, and he laughed.

 

“I can’t,” he said. “Can’t breathe anymore. Or don’t need to, I guess. No blood to oxygenate.” He was still making short, raspy sounds, and he shook his head. “I don’t know what this is. Force of habit. I don’t know.”

 

“Right,” she said. She squeezed his shoulders gently and they sat there until his not-breathing slowed. His body came back, piece by piece, and he lifted his head.

 

“You’re alive,” he said.

 

“So are you,” she said, and he laughed again.

 

“Not really, am I right?”

 

“You’re here,” she said firmly. “I’m talking to you. I never thought I’d get to do that again.”

 

“I didn’t either,” he said. He surged up and wrapped his arms around her and even though his body wasn’t warm anymore, she still melted into the hug. “I’m so sorry, Ana,” he said, muffled, into her shoulder. 

 

“I am too,” she whispered, and he pulled back and shook his head. 

 

“It never should have happened,” he said. “He never should have left you, he should have gone back for you, I was– so furious with him, Ana, I would never have–”

 

He was cut off by the crackle of his comms set, and they both froze. 

 

“Gabe? What’s going on?” He quickly turned off the ear piece but it was too late, the spell was broken. Ana drew back, resting on her heels. 

 

“Let me explain,” Gabriel said quietly. 

 

“I’m not sure how you’re going to do that.”

 

“They did this to me, Ana,” he said. He took off his mask and she was finally able to look him in the eyes. They were sunken now, with harsh red glowing from behind them. True to his word, the color had leeched from his skin, leaving it still dark but almost gray. And it was missing in patches, showing muscle and bone, the roots of yellow teeth in shallow gums. Ana gasped softly and despite everything, she recognized hurt in his eyes. 

 

“Who?” she asked. 

 

“ _ Them _ ,” he repeated insistently. “Jack and Ziegler and Petras and… Christ, I don’t know who else, but they left me there, Ana, they left me to become this thing. Just like they left you.” He grabbed her shoulders now, and the tips of his claws sank into her cloak. “I want to make sure they never do it again,” he said. “And I want justice. For both of us.”

 

She remembered that look over Gabriel, it had come over him more and more as Blackwatch had been pulled into the light and Overwatch had sunk. “Gabriel, I don’t know what happened, but I never heard about this from Jack,” she tried. “Or from Angela. I saw everything they saw, I would have known–”

 

“You weren’t there, at the end.” He ran his fingers through his hair and some of it flew off. “And this was– it was exactly what Angela was working on, regeneration, I had O’Deorain helping me because she refused–”

 

“That’s why you hired that ass?” Gabriel blinked, then cracked a small, sad smile. 

 

“I really was desperate,” he said. “And I couldn’t trust Ziegler, and I couldn’t trust Jack–”

 

“Why not? He trusted you so much, Gabriel. Too much, in my opinion, if you’ll recall–”

 

“He left you behind,” Gabriel said simply. “I could never forgive him for that. I will never.” 

 

There were distant sounds of yelling. Gabriel took his hands off Ana’s shoulders, picked up his mask, and held it loosely in his lap. 

 

“I don’t want to fight you, Ana,” he said. “I never thought I’d see you again. And I want to see you again.”

 

She stared at him, at his ruined face and ridiculous clothes and the terrorist emblem on his shoulder. He knew Jack was alive. Even if he had not said as much, she would have known he knew. She knew the look on his face. She had glimpsed it for a moment before Venice, before Jack had sent her off to speak with the families of the deceased. She knew Gabriel would kill Jack, if he saw him. She knew what she would do in that situation, and she hated it. 

 

But she hadn’t known if she would ever see Gabriel again, and now here he was. The biotic rifle was heavy on her back, a reminder that now she was to heal, even if that had never been the nature of their relationship, even if she knew that was just an excuse. 

 

“Okay,” she said, and Gabriel hugged her again, and then stood. 

 

“I’ll tell them I lost you,” he said. He almost sounded giddy. “That you didn’t leave a trail. And I’ll try to keep Hakim off your back, best I can without people getting suspicious.” Then he disintegrated and flew off, low and swift through the maze of crates. Ana watched him leave, and then she ran. 

 

-

 

Hakim’s operation abandoned the shipping center soon after, but she came back. She waited in the dead end for hours, feeling slightly ridiculous, before Gabriel finally descended in a black cloud. 

 

“Sorry,” he said, sounding appropriately guilty. “Wanted to make sure I wasn’t being followed.”

 

“I appreciate that,” she said. She unscrewed her thermos, poured a cup of tea, and held it out to him. Gabriel took off his mask and raised a threadbare eyebrow. 

 

“Right.” She quickly brought it back to her lips. “We should catch up, then.”

 

“We should.” Gabriel sat down, cross legged, on the pavement. “We have a lot to catch up on.”

 

They went through family, first. Gabriel had known Fareeha had gotten married, he had googled her and looked her up on Facebook too. “I don’t trust Ziegler,” he reminded Ana, but he dropped it when she rolled her eyes. He turned solemn when she told him how Fareeha had not responded to her letter, and set a hand on her shoulder. 

 

“She loves you, and she’s a good kid,” he said. “She’ll come around.”

 

“But she’s young,” Ana sighed. “She thinks she has all the time in the world to be angry, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to wait her out.” Gabriel nodded. 

 

He told her about Jesse. She had known Jesse had left Blackwatch early, but she did not know why, and Gabriel did not choose to enlighten her. Instead, he told her about what he had done in the years following: hunting bounties, honing his personal system of justice, drinking alone in seedy bars. 

 

“Have you reached out to him?” she asked, and he shook his head. 

 

“We didn’t exactly leave things off on the best terms.”

 

“Neither did you and I,” Ana pointed out. “But turns out when you find out someone’s still alive, the relief helps cut the tension.”

 

“Not always, right?” She scowled and he offered an unapologetic “sorry” before continuing. “And I’m still not really… alive, Ana. I’m not right. It might upset him more, knowing I’m like this.”

 

“You sound like the Shimada boy,” she said, and he squawked indignantly and she laughed. She lay down on the pavement– slowly, she wasn’t young anymore, her joints ached– and after a pause Gabriel lay down next to her. They lay there, staring at the stars and talking about old friends, until Ana yawned one too many times and he stood and told her to go to bed. 

 

“Are you tired?” she asked. He offered her a hand and shook his head as he pulled her up. 

 

“Never, not any more,” he said, and Ana thought about that as she lay in bed. 

 

-

 

She knew it had to happen eventually, but they ran into Jack far sooner than she would have liked. 

 

She knew Gabriel was tracking him, and he must have known she was too. But the both of them still froze when they spotted each other, almost equidistant from the trailer park shack Jack had been holed up in. 

 

Then, Gabriel bolted, falling into smoke. She ran and tried to tackle him, which was idiotic in retrospect, but she still managed to pin down one of his arms. 

 

“Let me go, Ana,” he hissed. 

 

“Gabriel, please, try to think, at least talk to him–”

 

“I talked to him for years, Ana!” Gabriel was yelling now and she could hear movement in the worn down trailer. “I talked to him for years, I led him, I followed him, I loved him, and he did this to me.”

 

“You don’t know that,” she said. 

 

“Yes I do.” He pulled his arm out from under her and stood, leaving her on the ground. “I’ve been here, Ana. I didn’t run. I stayed. And I’m still here. I know what happened, and you don’t. He did this to me,” he said, all venom now. “He did this to you.”

 

“I chose to go,” she said, and he started at the anger in her voice. “I chose to go where he couldn’t save me. It’s not his fault you don’t know why.”

 

The door of the trailer flew open, and Jack stood there with his visor on and his rifle in his hands. He looked at Gabriel, then Ana, and then he gasped. 

 

“Ana?”

 

He already sounded hurt so Ana did not look at him, she looked at Gabriel. He did not move. 

 

Then he lunged forward and punched Jack in the stomach. Jack fell with a wheeze and Gabriel descended upon him. Razor sharp spines flew out from his arm guards. He pulled off Jack’s visor and tossed it aside and raked his absurd claws across his face. Jack cried out and Ana pulled out her sidearm and shot Gabriel. The dart passed through his clothes and he did not even flinch. There was blood on the corrugated metal steps. Gabriel’s wide back completely covered Jack. Ana pulled her rifle off her back and shot him at the base of his spine. 

 

Gabriel stopped and shuddered, and then he completely fell apart. The black cloud almost drowned out her view of Jack, though she could hear him coughing. It lifted quickly, and she tilted her head up to the sky and watched him fly away. 

 

“Ana,” Jack said quietly. She looked back down. There were massive cuts across his face, atop old scars. He was holding his stomach tightly. His hand was outstretched. 

 

“I’m sorry, Ana,” he said, and that was what made her realize she was crying. She crawled over to him and broke open a biotic grenade. He hissed as the golden mist descended over him. She sat on the steps, held her head in her hands, and wept. 

 

-

 

The girl found Ana one day when she went for a grocery run. She was neon purple and pink and had glowing neural implants, so Ana would have spotted her even if she hadn’t been waving her down. But as it was, Ana warily approached her and the girl grinned. 

 

“Gabe wanted me to come up with some cover but I think that’s boring,” she said. Ana immediately reached for her gun and she laughed. “Really, Amari? In such a populated area? I thought you were one of the good ones.”

 

“What does he want,” Ana asked, her hand still on her holster. The girl leaned against the shelves of cereal and tapped her chin. 

 

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” she said. “He says he wants me to get intel on what you and Morrison are doing, but we all know you’re not doing much. He says he wants you two dead, but he just sent me. So I don’t know, Amari.” She was still smiling, but now she narrowed her eyes. “What do you think he wants?”

 

Ana studied the girl, her sharp smile and clever eyes and clearly homemade cyborgization implants. She remembered McCree, with his tattered hat he refused to let go of, and Fareeha, patiently waiting outside their war room with a basketball in her lap. She felt the wave of sadness and dread that always seemed to accompany hope nowadays. 

 

“Tell him it wasn’t his fault, that I left,” she said. “Tell him that anything he should have done differently, I forgive. Tell him I should have asked for help, before it was too late.”

 

The girl dropped her hand from her chin and blinked, disarmed. Then the grin reappeared. “Shit. That was deep. You got any more dirt on him?”

 

“No,” Ana said wearily. She started to move down the aisle, and the girl benignly watched her. Ana cast her eyes down as she passed. 

 

“Put back some of those frozen pizzas,” she said over her shoulder. “I don’t know what Gabriel has you doing, but you should know how to cook for yourself.”

 

The girl laughed. Ana paid for her food and left the store. She realized, as she was walking down the street, that for the first time in five years she did not feel invisible. And she realized that for the first time in a long time, that did not scare her. 

**Author's Note:**

> In honor of loresgiving, have some not-lore!
> 
> I'm @tacticalgrandma on tumblr if you want to talk to me there.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading, and any comments/kudos will make me love you <3


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